Users demand high-quality audio playback from audio appliances, as well as unimpaired rendering of near-field and far-field speech for telephony and speech-recognition tasks, and/or other features. In addition to loudspeaker and/or microphone transducers, known and proposed audio appliances incorporate various forms of amplification, power-delivery, processing, memory, and other circuitry and components that dissipate waste heat during operation.
If heat dissipated by a device is not absorbed by a surrounding environment at a rate equal to or higher than the rate of dissipation, the device's temperature increases. Nonetheless, reliable operation of many electrical components, and in particular, integrated electronic components, is often sensitive to temperature.